Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic will become the first space tourism business to go public .
It will list on the New York Stock Exchange but won’t have an initial public offering.
Instead it has merged with investment firm Social Capital Hedosophia which will have a 49% stake.
That will raise about $800 million for Virgin Galactic as it preps for its first commercial space flights.
By bypassing an IPO it will avoid having to organize a road show to drum up investor support.
Social Capital Hedosophia founder Chamath Palihapitiya will also personally invest $100 and becomes chairman of the new business.
Branson said Virgin Galactic has made ‘great progress’ in test flights and is confident in its safety and commercial success of the business.
It will ‘open space to more investors and thousands of new astronauts,’ Branson says.
It already has about 700 customers who have paid a deposit to take flight into orbit at a full cost of $250,000 each.
Branson expects to be on first flight before the end of 2019 which will then follow with commercial services.
The VSS Unity carrier aircraft will move to the upgraded Spaceport America base in New Mexico for final test flights before officially launching commercial services.
